The high-speed UV inkjet press, AccurioJet 60000, is explained to be capable of producing 6000 sheets per hour along with duplex printing capabilities. The press produces high image quality and reproduction stability across a range of media, taking advantage of Konica Minolta’s inline sensors and a spectrophotometer to automatically monitor printing conditions.

Visitors to Konica Minolta at drupa will also be the first to see the AccurioPress C84hc, which uses high chroma toner. Free from the restrictions imposed by the colour gamut of ordinary toner, prints are said to be more consistent across bright and vivid colours.

The company will also introduce Myiro colour management tools for graphics arts applications. Developed by Konica Minolta’s Sensing Business Unit, these tools include spectrophotometers for colour management and high-speed auto scanning.

Konica will be joined on the stand by MGI (MGI Digital Printing Systems) showing its new JetSeal and inline die cutter, as well as launching an advanced version of its AccurioPro Colour Manager software suite.

Also joining Konica Minolta will be Industrial Inkjet (IIJ), a specialist in bespoke inkjet customisation, which exclusively uses Konica Minolta print heads in its products; and Plockmatic, a supplier of finishing options, as well as Acco and Fiery.

Konica Minolta will also be running fully automated production lines driven by artificial intelligence, and will show the use of robotics that includes the premiere of a Cobot arm.

Jon Hiscock, head of production and industrial print at Konica Minolta (UK), stated, ‘As a major player in digital production printing it is our mission to promote and support the shift from analogue to digital print. In doing so, we will build a world where high-value-added printed materials are created efficiently with minimal environmental impact.’

The post Konica to premiere new technology at drupa 2024 appeared first on Digital Printer.

Gina Farran had built a successful career in the finance industry as an investment banker in London. As her demanding career progressed, finding time for simple personal pleasures, like getting to a salon for a manicure, became more of a challenge. In the age of subscription boxes, e-commerce, and personalisation, she felt as if the nail industry was in need of a shake-up.

Co-founder Chris Mosedale said, ‘We create made-to-measure nail gels using computer vision technology. We have our own custom, plant-based material which is similar to nail gel. They are laser cut to a customer’s specifications, created from photos of their hands, and they will last as long as a manicure.

‘UV curing is used for gel nails, and someone mentioned that UV printing is quite common in the signage industry, so we thought we would give it a shot. We looked at a couple of other options such as screen printing, but UV printing has the durability and ability to customise that we need.’

Bringing a UV machine in-house allows the Glaize team to trial and tweak as they go.

Mr Mosedale added, ‘It’s all mostly manufactured a million miles away and sold on. Having brought on a chemist full-time, the UJF is seeing a lot of activity, as the business finds the balance between the fine gel and the amount of ink needed to achieve the necessary colours and artistic designs, as well as adjusting the adhesives to accommodate the printed products. It’s running every day right now.’

The post Glaize nails it with Mimaki UJF-3042MkII appeared first on Digital Printer.

European staff are now based adjacent to the headquarters of Durst Group in Brixen in the 5300sqm ‘Kraftwerk’ premises, which was officially unveiled in September 2022. The company says it has set its sights on becoming a leader in the digital flatbed and UV production entry- and mid-level markets by replicating sales successes of its parent company in the US.

Target sectors include signage, decoration, corporate industrial and packaging. Since it was set up less than a year ago, more than 25 installations of digital flatbed systems have taken place across Europe. Latest products include the VR6D-HS and VK300D-HS UV flatbed machines covering the mid-and high-end performance range. These had their first European public showing at Fespa in May 2022.

Vanguard Europe is currently led by Fabian Sottsas, who has worked for the last 20 years with Durst, which acquired Vanguard Digital Printing Systems in October 2020. Alongside him is Yiannis Apostolidis, business development director.

Mr Sottsas said, ‘We have had an extremely strong start and organically grown the business thanks to a solid relationship between our core staff, distributors and resellers. With unlimited passion at the forefront of global technology, we are working to grow business together with customers within entry- and mid-level markets. We are providing true digital flatbed and UV production printers from a company in the Durst Group that are designed in the US and assembled in Europe.’

Mr Apostolidis said, ‘Formed seven years ago when only one printer was sold in the first 12 months, what a transformation it has been. Now Vanguard Digital Printing Systems is producing over 200 machines a year, and we are determined to replicate that success in Europe. We expect to make more announcements soon.’

The post Vanguard Europe unveils new headquarters in Italy appeared first on Digital Printer.

The PVC-free, eco-friendly polyester 75 μm film has been specifically designed for use on glass and other flat, smooth surfaces and will be included in the Nottingham-based company’s soon-to-be-confirmed ‘Go Green’ range. Suitable for both short- and mid-term graphics, the media is durable for up to two years indoors.

Neschen easy dot PET matt L-UV is 40% lighter in weight than conventional films, so it is cheaper to transport and leads to less waste post-usage. To add to its eco-credentials, the company claims it contains 25% of post-consumer recycled (PCR) content.

John Draycott, marketing manager at ArtSystems, said, ‘This new film incorporates Neschen’s proven water-based, solvent-free easy dot adhesive technology ensuring easy bubble-free application and residue-free removal. This dimensionally stable film is compatible with Latex and UV-curable inks and is ideal for indoor applications such as trade show graphics, sales promotions, POS advertising, and much more.’

The film has been HP-certified for use with Latex and UV inks, has an EN 13501 certification, and achieves the best possible fire protection class for polymer films (B-S1,d0). It is available from ArtSystems in widths of 137.2 cm and lengths of 50m and 10m.

The post ArtSystems announces UK availability of Neschen film appeared first on Digital Printer.

The UJV100-160 uses lower-cost LUS-190 UV ink, allowing a faster turnaround without the need for a degassing period after printing. The LUS-190 ink can be printed onto not only PVC, but also uncoated substrates such as PET film and paper. The new system is designed to deliver an alternative to solvent printing.

Meanwhile the JV100-160 uses Mimaki’s SS21 ink set which supports a range of applications for indoor or outdoor use. Available in both a dual CMYK four-colour variant and an eight-colour model, Mimaki says the inks are a ‘proven solution for delivering long lasting, vibrant prints.’

‘The new UV and solvent ‘100 Series’ printers represent the ideal combination of features and performance at a highly competitive price point,’ says Hybrid MD Brett Newman. ‘Employing proprietary technology found on models that sit further up the Mimaki product line, users will benefit from improved operation, productivity and task automation.’

Bert Benckhuysen, senior product manager at Mimaki Europe added, ‘Mimaki always prides itself in introducing printing technology that excels when it comes to efficiency and high-quality and these two models fulfil both. The ‘100 Series’ are also versatile printers and users benefit from the flexibility to produce an array of applications, from vibrant wallpapers to high-quality signboards.’

Mimaki has included its new RasterLink7 Rip software with the series, based on Harlequin RIP developed by Global Graphics Software.

The post Mimaki launches entry level roll-to-roll inkjets appeared first on Digital Printer.

is to put graphical images on a range of different substrates, which could include anything from fabrics to PVC and metal. Those images have to survive the ambient conditions of wherever they are displayed, including outdoor weathering or interior retail spaces, and for a specified period of time that could be up to five years. The better the ink, the more reliable its performance, and since every wide-format printing provider depends on the things they’ve printed staying printed, it’s important to be sure that you’re using the right ink for the range of applications you’re offering.

That said, there’s rarely much choice of ink with inkjet and you’ll mostly have to use whatever the printer vendor supplies. This means that the ink is one of the most important components of a printing system to test when buying a printer.

Most inks will be tuned for a specific printer so that the manufacturer will have chosen an ink that’s suitable for the printhead in use and then tweaked the formula to improve jettability as well as playing with the temperature around the head to control viscosity. Printheads work best with low viscosity fluids but this characteristic limits the performance of the ink once it hits the substrate, where we want the ink to form defined dots. Consequently, most inks contain a highly complex mix of various additives, such as humectants to ensure the ink does not dry out in the nozzles, as well as binders to attach the pigments to the substrate.

Mimaki’s MUH-100-Si silver ink can be used to produce various textured effects.

So what should you look for in an ink? Obviously the inkset has to be able to reproduce a wide range of colours. Most people test this against the Pantone range but you should also consider specific customer logos as well as tricky colours like rhodamine red and reflex blue.

Naturally the ink has to be scratch-resistant. Generally, flexible UV prints (on roll media) will not cure to the same degree of hardness as some flatbeds so if for example you’re printing rigid boards on a hybrid machine then you will want to be sure that the cured ink can withstand the level of abrasion it’s likely to encounter. This also applies to indoor prints such as wall coverings that might encounter a certain amount of abrasive cleaning chemicals. However, some vendors do offer a choice of inksets, which might offer better adhesion to some materials or a tougher finish for use with rigid substrates.

On a roll-to-roll printer the ink has to dry before it gets to the take-up roll. On some substrates you might struggle to lay down enough ink to reproduce vibrant colours without overwhelming the drying system. To counter this, some inks have a high pigment loading but this pushes up their cost; this is a worthwhile compromise if it allows drying – and therefore printing – at higher speeds.

Solvent, latex or UV?

At its simplest, most ink consists of a low viscosity liquid carrier that allows the ink to be jetted through the printhead nozzles, plus the pigment particles and some form of binder to attach the pigments to the media.

In the case of solvent ink, the solvent not only acts as the liquid carrier but also helps to soften the surface of the substrate so that the pigment can penetrate into the material, making it more durable and more resistant to weathering and scratching. The solvent then evaporates away into the atmosphere, leaving the dried pigment behind. Health and safety regulation has outlawed the most aggressive solvents (containing volatile organic compounds or VOCs) so that today’s eco-solvent inks generally work best with coated media. The printers need some drying to help speed the evaporation to dry the prints.

Eco-solvent is a relatively simple ink technology, which dries reasonably quickly so that both the printers and the ink are fairly cheap and still widely used. The major disadvantage is that you’ll have to wait, usually overnight, for the inks to fully dry before laminating, and for any odour to disappear. Suppliers such as Epson, Mimaki, Roland DG, Oki and Mutoh offer eco-solvent printers.

Nazdar has released these 730 Series UV inkjet inks, which are suitable for a wide range of wide format printers.

Latex ink – mostly associated with HP but also available from Ricoh – doesn’t actually contain latex but is instead a form of resin ink where a polymer is used to encapsulate the pigments, which are then suspended in water as a carrier liquid that can be jetted through the printheads. Once jetted, this ink relies on heat being applied, both to evaporate the water away, and to activate the polymers to bind the pigments to the media.

The major advantage of latex over solvent ink is that the prints are dry as soon as they come out of the printer with no need to set them aside for degassing. There’s no smell, which makes them suitable for use in retail as well as hospitals and schools. They are generally tough enough to survive outdoors unlaminated for up to three years, and longer if laminated. These inks are often seen as more environmentally-friendly than other inks, particularly solvent, because the main carrier liquid is water. However, it’s worth noting that they do require a lot of energy to cure.

Mutoh has developed an interesting alternative, with a resin ink for its ValueJet 1627MH hybrid printer that uses a solvent as the liquid carrier. However, unlike a latex ink, the resins in this ink are not heat activated. Instead it’s the evaporation of the solvent that causes the resins to bind to the substrate.

UV-curable inks rely on a chemical reaction, known as photo polymerisation. This polymerisation is triggered by photo initiators within the ink, which produce free radicals when exposed to UV light. The major components of these inks are monomers and oligomers, which the free radicals cause to cross-link together to cure the ink. UV inks are quite complex and require expensive raw materials, especially the photo-initiators that are used to start the curing process, so that these inks are always going to cost more than their solvent or latex counterparts. However, they are hard-wearing and can be used in many outdoor applications without further lamination. Moreoever, since they dry straightaway, they can be finished and delivered right after printing. UV-curing printers are offered by a wide range of printer manufacturers including Agfa, Canon/ Fujifilm, Durst, EFI, HP Scitex, Inktec, Mimaki, Mutoh, Ricoh, Roland DG and swissQprint.

The conventional approach has been to use mercury lamps located on the print carriage to provide the UV light but many vendors are now turning to LEDs as an alternative. There are numerous advantages to these, including the fact the LEDs will in most cases last for the lifetime of the printer, and use significantly less energy. But LEDs produce only a narrow range of wavelengths so the ink has to contain a photo-initiator that responds to the precise wavelength of the LED in use. This of course pushes up the price, though economies of scale mean that this is less of an issue now that this curing approach has become so widespread.

Several vendors offer additional colours, with white being the most common. White ink relies on larger, heavier particles, typically titanium dioxide, which sink to the bottom of the ink tanks. It’s essential that the ink system routinely stirs the ink to prevent this, ideally also recirculating the ink through the ink system to keep the particles in suspension. Not every job requires white ink, so there’s a danger the ink might dry in the heads, but many jobs, such as backlits, do require a white layer so you may be better off with two white channels to maintain the speed of the printer while still achieving the desired opacity.

There are also special effects inks, such as metallic. Mimaki, for example, has developed a metallic ink, MUH-100-Si, for use with its UJF-7151plus industrial flatbed printer. As with white ink, the heavier particles tend to sink to the bottom of the tank but the UJF-7151plus uses printheads with built in recirculation. This ink can produce a reasonably wide range of different metallic tints by printing coloured ink on top of the metallic ink. The metallic ink can also be combined with a clear ink to produce textured and embossing effects.

Several ink manufacturers offer aftermarket inks, which can offer cost savings of up to 30% compared to the printer manufacturers’ offerings. These inks will usually be designed to work for a given printhead but won’t have been tuned specifically for any particular printer. There are quite a few solvent inks available but not so many UV inks, mainly because the raw materials for UV inks tend to be expensive and UV printers are more expensive than solvent machines, so that the ink is not such a big part of the total cost of ownership.

Inevitably, an aftermarket ink will almost certainly void any warranty on the printer. Given that most wide format printers will come with a two-year warranty, the printer should have more than earned its keep by the time the warranty expires. So for a lot of service providers it makes sense to use the vendor’s ink for the warranty period and then to switch to a third party ink to squeeze a bit more margin out of the printer before ultimately replacing it.

Finally, it’s worth noting that most RIPs will have some degree of colour management and this should allow you to minimise the amount of ink that’s laid down without compromising the colour density. This will not only save money by using less ink, but will help ensure the ink dries quickly.

The post Liquid engineering appeared first on Digital Printer.

Mr Roberts will take on day-to-day operational responsibility for managing the Oxfordshire-based business, working alongside founder Adrian Lockwood who will remain as chief executive.

‘Simon’s expertise greatly complements the existing broad depth of industry and technical knowledge residing within the current team’ said Mr Lockwood, who will now work specifically on high level strategic planning for the company. ‘It was a positive decision to appoint someone from outside of the digital or UV industry to this post, and he brings fresh thinking and leadership skills to assure the next stage in our growth.’

Mr Roberts finished, ‘I am excited to be playing a major role in the development of one of the market’s most innovative developers alongside such an experienced management team.’

The post Integration Technology appoints MD appeared first on Digital Printer.

The Better Business Bootcamp will take place on 18 July at the company’s Creative Centre in Clevedon, Somerset with visitors able to explore the potential of Roland’s VersaUV LEF series with their own choice of substrate, object or material.

Roland claims that the LEF range allows creative professionals to produce graphics, text and photographs in ‘vibrant colours and sharp monochromes, and to add glossy highlights, to almost any surface.’ Existing examples include one-of-a-kind designs on wooden furniture, personalised golf balls, acrylic signage and electronics.

The company’s ECO-UV gloss inks can also be printed in layers to produce textures, raised text and other special effects.

The post Roland lays down UV gauntlet appeared first on Digital Printer.

There are three ways to get more metal into your print: it can be mixed as flakes into the ink or toner that forms the image, used underneath the image as a silver or metallised layer on a substrate, or applied on top as a foil made of microscopically thin metal. All three ways demand very different techniques and processes, and give different results.

Metallic-er

A metallic substrate may be a board or paper pre-printed with silver ink, or it may be a metallised plastic layer (usually polyester) applied as a laminate onto paper or board.

Unlike printed ink, a highly reflective near-mirror finish is possible from metallised plastic, as well as various diffraction and holographic effects. Some digital processes are happier with plastics than others. HP Indigos can do it, and so can UV inkjets, whether the wide-format type, or the little ‘baby flatbeds’ available from Mimaki, Mutoh and Roland. UV inks are used by the Konica Minolta and Komori B2 inkjet presses sold respectively as the AccurioJet KM-1 and Impremia IS29. Landa’s B1 S10 commercial press will print on plastic too.

Some dry toner printers will work well with metallised films, some won’t, so the best way to check is to ask your supplier for samples and run a test. Broadly speaking, most are okay, with decent results reported for MGI Meteors, current Konica Minoltas, Ricoh Pro C current models and their Heidelberg Versafire equivalents, as well as the latest Xerox Iridesse.

Non-UV wide-format inks are less certain. Aqueous inkjets can’t print on metallised plastics without expensive extra coatings. Solvent and latex inks should work on plastics, and some models can print opaque white.

Celloglas’ Mirri range is well established and available as board with a wide range of metallic effects, mostly intended for litho or UV inkjet. However there’s a digital HP Indigo capable material in silver or ‘rainbow’ diffraction effects in 255 or 325gsm and sizes up to 500 x 700mm. Celloglas will also apply laminate to your choice of paper or other substrate to special order. Mirri’s data sheet says it will work with HP Indigos and UV inkjets, but for anything else you really need to run tests.

Some other film suppliers have metallics that you can laminate yourself onto paper or board. Graphic Image Films, UK distributer for the Spanish Derprosa range, can supply gloss silver and gold, plus diffraction/holograhic effect materials. A new anti-marking version is out, which is resistant to finger marks. These can be printed by HP Indigo or UV inks, plus some toner types; the company says it’ll supply free samples for trials.

A neat trick with Derprosa and rivals’ soft touch velvet-feel metallic film is to print a clear spot gloss, which smooths out the matt surface to give a near-mirror effect. Scodix in particular promoted this effect after a Spanish customer worked it out, but it should work with any high gloss spot UV varnish.

Scodix (available through Friedheim in the UK) has refined the process, which it calls Metallic: here a gloss silver metallised substrate is overlaminated with an ink-receptive clear matt film for HP Indigo, UV inkjet or some dry toner printers, with blockout white if needed in some areas. Scodix Sense clear spot inkjet varnish is then printed on top. The ink colours the metallic effect where needed and the Scodix Sense brings it up to fully reflective glory.

Nigel Tracey, head of packaging at Scodix, says ‘you can make unbelievably complex coloured effects very easily, but the downside is the cost of materials is very high. It’s mostly used for sample packs and short run luxury packaging.’

The UK’s Kernow Print can supply Metalik, a highly reflective metallic board range in silver, gold and copper, with separate grades suitable for toner print or HP Indigo ElectroInk, and sheet sizes up to B2. It’s also introducing a metallised self-adhesive plastic for wide format printercutters that use solvent or latex inks. If applied to glass, the metallic effect is visible from both sides.

MDV in Germany supplies a metallic silver (not mirror) substrate called UltraSilver, on paper, board or film. This works for some dry toner presses, as well as UV inkjets, the company says. UltraSilver is available from UK paper merchant Elliott Baxter, double-sided in 125-360gsm weights, or single-sided in 120 and 235gsm.

Beata Ulman, senior product marketing manager for commercial and industrial print at Ricoh UK, says ‘We can print on MDV UltraSilver, however we find it very matt and our pre-sales specialists prefer to use Kernow Metalik boards to showcase a true metallic effect to our customers.’

HP Indigos can print white ink over
metallised substrates

White-out

If you print onto a metallic substrate directly, then transparent inks or toners will take on a metallic tint, but they’ll look a bit faded. If you want normal colour to show then a white undercoat can be run underneath. If you print white overall and leave ‘holes’ for the metallic substrate to show though, it resembles spot foiling, but with the digital print advantage of variable images. The results can be striking, especially if the white is also halftoned to vary the metal show-through.

All current HP Indigo presses can print an opaque white as a first colour, which works well over metallised substrates. Dry toner digital presses that can print white include Kodak’s five-unit NexPress and Nexfinity presses; Ricoh’s five unit Pro C7100 and current Pro C7200 models; the old Xerox Colour 1000i and the latest Xerox Iridesse; and OKI’s amazingly good value £1995 Pro7411WT (A4) five colour desktop printer (there is also an A3 model that can print white, but only by removing black).

Hi ho silver

Recent years have seen an increasing number of digital presses with metallic inks or toners. While the results are certainly metallic, they are like silver paint, rather than mirror finish. One the other hand, it’s easy to print halftones and graduated tints for more complex colour effects.

Kodak was the first to introduce a metallic toner, gold, for its five unit NexPresses at drupa 2008. It took a good while to deliver, and so far there is still no silver even for the latest Nexfinity models.

Xerox was next with the option for gold or silver for its five-unit Colour 1000i (a Fuji-Xerox model). Both were the brightest dry toner metallics to date, but were replaced by further improved gold and silver on the Iridesse introduced last year. This has six colour stations, so can print two specials at once out of the choice of silver, gold, white and clear. This opens up a lot of options, especially as the colour order can be swapped around so one special can be an undercoat and one or two can be overcoats.

HP introduced a white ink for all Indigo digital press models in 2010, which was very successful over metallised substrates. In 2013, it introduced the long-hinted silver metallic ink, though initially only for its continuous feed label presses; silver for sheet-fed Indigos arrived last year. Given a seven-unit Indigo this opens the possibility of printing CMYK plus white, clear and silver, in any order.

Some wide format solvent inkjets offer metallic inks. These are essentially silver-coloured, but are intended for overprinting to give other metallic colours.

Mimaki and Roland supply metallic inks on some of their wide format solvent printers, with Mimaki releasing an improved SS21 silver for its CJV300 and CJV150 series printer/cutters in the past couple of years. Mutoh doesn’t have a metallic ink so far.

Efforts to develop metallic UV inks previously haven’t seen great success for reasons to do with the thick ink films. However, Mimaki has recently released a UV-LED cured metallic ink called MUH-100-Si for its UJF-715-plus baby flatbed that looks respectably shiny, so it can be done.

Roland offers silver ink for some of its print-and-cut machines

Swatches and software

Often the digital front ends for metallic-capable printers will automatically generate swatch books which run colours of various tints and combinations over the metallic ink/toner. These can be given unique numbers that when used in the digital artwork as special colours will let the RIP call up the corresponding combinations.

If you don’t have that, then the US company Color-Logic has a software solution and licence for printers to create and print Swatch books for CMYK print over any metallic layer – foil, ink or laminate. It can also generate metallic colour palettes and plugins to load into Adobe Creative Cloud applications. Its FX-Viewer is an on-screen 3D ‘virtual proofing system’ that simulates how metallic-printed artwork will catch the light when rotated.

Swatches can also be created for some metallic substrates with white-capable presses – recent examples are Folex Silver Polyester cut sheet film for HP Indigo presses, and the Kernow Print Metalik and MDV UltraSilver papers for the Ricoh Pro C7200 toner presses.

Spot cold foil on top

We’re seeing more and more methods of adapting hot foil die-stamping foil to digital printing without needing the metal dies. Briefly, they are sublimation foiling, where hot foil adhesive sticks to heated dry toner (or Indigo ElectroInk) print; or foiling units added to thermal laminators, where the rollers heat the print in the same way.

Here we’re examining alternative cold foiling methods that rely on a printed sticky ink as the adhesive (rather than a heat-activated adhesive) on the foil rolls. Foils can be mirror-finish metallics in various colours, but a wide choice of other effects, such as diffraction and holograms, patterns such as wood grains, and solid colours are available too.

Scodix and MGI offer foiling on special versions of their high-build clear UV digital spot varnish inkjets, in formats up to B1. The high build means that the final effect appears embossed as well as foiled.

Precise methods vary, but in Scodix’s case it uses an add-on unit built in the UK by Compact Foilers of Taunton. The Scodix clear UV varnish is first pinned with UV to ‘freeze’ it, and then given a second ‘activating’ zap of UV that makes it sticky. 

UK based Autobond also can add cold foiling to its SUV spot UV units that it developed to run inline with its heavy duty laminators for 360, 520 and 740mm sheets. It can also offer hot foiling. Managing director John Gilmore says ‘We have a unique selling point of being the only manufacturer in the world to make a machine that can film laminate, spot UV and foil inline.’

The German foil maker Leonhard Kurz makes B3 and B3 sublimation foilers called DM-Luxliners, but it also offers a dedicated 324mm wide (B2) sheetfed inkjet cold foiler called DM-Liner UV Ink. It uses Kurz’s specially developed Digital Metal foil range, which can be overprinted by HP ElectroInks or most dry toners.

A promotional sample for Mimaki DigiFoil by UK distributor Hybrid

In February Kurz demonstrated its new DM-Jetliner inkjet web digital foiler at HP’s customer event in Tel Aviv, where it ran inline with an HP Indigo 6900 web-fed label press. It can be fitted before or after the press passes through the foil and completes the varnish cure. MGI calls its process iFoil and describes it as a hot foil process, as the ink is heated to make it sticky.

Steinemann, another German specialist, has also developed foiling module called DFoil to fit inline with its DMax spot UV varnisher, available in 72 and 106cm widths. It applies Kurz Digital Metal foils over the spot UV (which can be flat or raised), from up to seven separate rolls, at up to 5000sph. Cold foiling can also be added to the Czech Komfi 36 (B3)and 54 (B2) digital spot varnishers, also distributed by Friedheim.

For smaller formats, UK supplier i-Sub Digital offers a cold foiling option called Digi-Foil for the Mimaki UJF range of small UV-LED flatbeds, based on a modified Vivid Matrix laminator and foil feeder that works with Mimaki’s sticky primer ink. A hand foil feeder can be used with larger format sheets from the JFX200 flatbed, which prints the same primer.

As CMYK digital presses are all ‘good enough’ nowadays, then extra colours and embellishment are a way for a printer to add value as well as offering customers and their designers new ways to catch their customers’ eyes. Bright metal is shiny and eye-catching and people have liked it for thousands of years. Now it’s easily accessible for digital print.

The post New techniques to put you on your metal appeared first on Digital Printer.